Mark WiedmerRemember the song "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone," most famously recorded by the Monkees? If you're a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball fan, don't you want to launch into that oldie goldie with all your frustration and fury today?
I know what some of you are thinking in the wake of now-former UTC coach Matt McCall's Wednesday decision to leave the Mocs for the Minutemen of the University of Massachusetts. Whether any of us like it or not, this coaching change is pretty much happening right when we expected it to after last year's NCAA tournament experience.
It was then - the Mocs having just been humbled by Indiana in the opening round of the tourney - that much speculation began to surface that McCall, having just completed his first season on the job, would be gone at the close of this season, given that he was welcoming back a senior-dominated team.
Beyond that, the overriding feeling was that this year's model wouldn't just reach the tournament but quite likely win a game or two once it got there, so talented and experienced did the 2016-17 roster figure to be by Southern Conference standards.
An opening victory at Tennessee certainly did nothing to diminish those lofty expectations.
But after that grand moment in Knoxville, nothing much else this season went exactly as planned. The Mocs won 10 fewer games, didn't win so much as a single Southern Conference tournament game, missed the NCAA tourney altogether and basically imploded down the stretch, losing their final five games and eight of their last 12.
Yet there went McCall on Wednesday, off to UMass for a salary estimated to be more than three times larger than the $232,000 he was making annually here.
And because of that, here UTC goes again, looking for its third coach in four years, hopeful that whoever replaces McCall will stick around at least a year or two longer than the two seasons McCall and predecessor Will Wade chose to call Chattanooga home.
Certainly much of this is about money and money only. Wade more than quadrupled his salary when he left to run the show at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he'd once been an assistant. The extra dough McCall is set to earn will cover the cost of a lot more than the snow shovels and heavier overcoats he and his family will need.
Because of those massive raises, no one should necessarily be angry over Wade and McCall's exits. It's the American way. It's also a high compliment to UTC athletic director David Blackburn's eye for coaching talent.
That said, the apparent goal of Blackburn to go out and hire the best available young assistant whenever the UTC men's job opens might be fraying around the edges.
All those seniors McCall coached are gone. The prospective 2017-18 roster is uncertain. Now, too, the incoming recruiting class. Whomever UTC chooses to replace McCall could have a major rebuilding job on his hands, unlikely to build a serious Southern Conference contender until possibly the 2019-20 season.
Does that mean Blackburn's plan was flawed? Not really.
Both Wade and McCall can clearly coach. And if you look around the country at the 32 Division I coaching openings that are being filled, youth is being served more times than not. New Indiana coach Archie Miller is 38. McCall is 35. Wade, now the LSU boss, is 34.
But it's not the only way. Brad Underwood, who left Oklahoma State for Illinois after only one season with the Cowboys, is 53. Former Tennessee assistant Steve Forbes led East Tennessee State to the SoCon tourney crown and a respectable showing against Florida in the NCAA tourney at the age of 52. Longtime Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins, 47, just got his first head coaching job at Washington.
There's no single blueprint to build a winner. Merely look at this weekend's Final Four, where the ages of the four head coaches range from North Carolina's Roy Williams (66) to Oregon's Dana Altman (58) to Gonzaga's Mark Few (54) to South Carolina's Frank Martin (51).
There is also the following cold cup of reality to the face of anyone who believes our town's charm and UTC's 11 total NCAA appearances from a one-bid league like the SoCon are all that's needed to find a capable coach willing to stick around for more than a season or two.
"My family and I always said it would take something extremely special to move us away from Chattanooga, and that's what we have here at UMass," McCall said in a prepared statement.
"The tradition and resources that are in place not only make this one of the best basketball jobs in the Atlantic 10 Conference, but one of the best jobs in the country."
Take away the five straight NCAA berths won by current Kentucky coach John Calipari in the 1990s, and the Minutemen have three total NCAA bids. Ever.
No offense to the UMass program, but the only thing special about it these days is the $750,000 it is willing to pay McCall.
UTC has no way to pay the man who replaces McCall anything close to that. But after two straight two-and-done hires, it might be time to find someone who views this job as more than a 24-month stepping stone to a bigger payday.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.